Another class divide. Hauling all your cash around would be so risky, from simple loss as well as theft. Just another stresser for the poor.

My wife was working as a summer camp nurse for a couple weeks and they had a minor medical emergency and took off for the nearest town. This was very early in the morning and she had cash, but had left her cards at the camp. She couldn't find a gas station that was open and took cash. They were all locked down and cards-at-the-pump only.

Traveling has become much easier: you can use your US credit or debit card and have the local currency popping out of an ATM, even when you arrive at 3:00AM, and to my experience, the exchange rate was better than anything available locally. No more travelers checks!

Its funny that this is only occuring now. The technology has been around in Canada since about 95. I have been effectively cashless outside of bars since about 2000. In Canada because we only have 5 banks they created a direct payment system that immediately debits your account and implemented throughout the country in less than 5 years. Compared with the US her all of the little banks made it difficult to standardize. It took until Visa implemented it through their infastructure for it to expand.

I dont understand the resistance to going cashless. It significantly improves employee safety and decreases the under the table tax free market.

I have to think this is just a marketing ploy for sustainability with a small possible financial reason. The handling of a cash POS and armored pickup, etc, have got to cost a little. Though I think almost all the folks in the market for relatively nice outdoors gear have no problem paying with a card, I'm pretty sure it's the same market that would prefer an option of paying that can't be followed by big brother.

I find it ironic that they printed "They are going paperless" on a piece of paper cardstock.

I wonder if they give you a receipt for your purchase?

With that said, to each business their own, but I hope all business don't follow this approach.. You think the banks have us by the balls now, Imagine if you had to use them to make every single purchase.. Talk about fee's...NO THANKS.. I like to keep my money safe and secure at the First Bank of Lawson : )

@Nigel: "I think everywhere else good creditcard but you have to carry your I.D."

All my cards do not have signatures, and instead explicitly state "SEE I.D." With that said, I present identification /maybe/ once a month.

I often carry small amounts of cash (<= $20) for the few places that don't take a card or won't under a certain purchase amount (e.g. my local coffee shop, which often means I spend more when I buy a muffin out of necessity). I can't imagine walking into GoLite (or REI, etc) with $300 in cash for some new gear.

Since this topic has been hammered out elsewhere on the Internets, here's a quick summation:

1. Requiring ID for credit card purchases is dis-allowed except when: 1a. a card is un-signed, in which case the card should be signed and matched against ID.

2. "See I.D." cards are considered not signed, and may not be accepted. 2a. Good luck arguing "see ID" is your signature. I'll let any lawyers in the room point out why this is unlikely to fly, should it ever need to be argued in court.

3. Identify verification should only consist of matching the card signature against that on the signed receipt.

Of course, as you all know, these rules are generally ignored by most merchants. My own take: I'm protected by the cardholder agreement, and the cashier doesn't need to see my ID (which if it's a driver's license, happens to have a home address on it).

Finally, as noted, cash is legal tender for all debts, but a purchase only becomes a debt if payment is not required immediately. If you try carrying out the goods without the store agreeing to bill you later, it becomes shoplifting.

I just came from the GoLite store in Fort Collins. I was unaware of their "no cash" policy, and I have to say that I was a little irritated. I can appreciate all of the arguments mentioned here for safety, simplicity, sustainability, etc... from the businesses perspective. What I haven't seem mentioned is the adage that "the customer is always right."

Living close to downtown Fort Collins, I often walk and usually do not carry credit or debit cards when I walk, although I may carry my ID and some cash - usually a $20 bill. I did walk today to do somethings downtown, and happened to go into the GoLite store, which I had never visited before. I did not intend to purchase anything, but found a t-shirt on the sale rack the total cost of which came to less than $20, AND I happened to have that amount of cash. (Often if I can pay for something with the cash I have on hand, I will do so.)

I was taken aback and put off when the clerk went into great detail about all of the reasons that GoLite doesn't accept cash and then added what an inconvenience cash is for him.... Hmm! Well it's a bit of an inconvenience for me, as a customer, to pay with a credit card that has been overused, when I have the cash in my wallet.

It's not as if the GoLite location in Fort Collins is in a particularly dangerous location, and they are not a convenience store, which may be more subject to robbery. The store is surrounded by all sorts of other retail establishments - all of which accept cash and credit, if not checks, and I suspect GoLite is not open into the wee hours of the night, as a bar or restaurant might be.

Cash is still legal tender, and has been mentioned, not everyone has a credit card or can qualify for one, so this no cash policy seems discriminatory to me.

As a former business manager, I understand exactly why they made the decision they did. Cash presents an internal and external security issue (internal theft from employees, external robbery from criminals) as well as forces them to make daily deposits at the bank, most likely in person, and banks have gotten to the point where they charge fees for every dang thing. Plus they have to have change on hand, and guess what? Banks charge for change, also. Cash is a PITA.

I deal almost exclusively with my credit card. I pay it off every month, but pay all my bills and purchases with the card. I find it inconvenient is a store doesn't take the card, but I respect that as their right as well. That's their decision not to pay the 3-6% in fees their credit card processing company charges them. Understandable, if inconvenient for me. There's one local sporting goods company that has lost business from me because they don't take cards. It's not a matter of vindictiveness but rather it's more convenient for me to drive a little further up the road and use my credit card than to make a separate stop at the bank for cash and then drive back to the sporting goods store. And yet that store has been around in this town my entire life and clearly they have a clientele that supports their decision to accept cash only.

Vote with your feet and don't shop at Go-Lite if their policy bothers you.

Jeremy and Dena gave nice summaries from legal and management perspectives. Dena's experiences match my own in retail years ago, and I suspect the millenials aren't as practiced at cash handling, paperwork, and in many cases, math, as boomers were.

In addition:

I rack up major frequent flyer miles with >80,000 actual-butt-in-seat miles plus running almost all bills through the airline credit card. To the point where I get about 8 free round trips each year and I use them for family and friends (and, yes, I love you guys, but you're not THAT good of friends).

But a point I haven't seen covered: privacy. Our recent thread on a tradegy of a young man perishing in the Bob Marshall Wilderness linked to news stories which describe law enforcement subpoenaing credit purchases down to the level of what beer was purchased. There was a tragic (and more pathological) case up here some years back when Safeway Club Card records were subpoenaed to show that the mother whose house burned down (with an accelerant) and who had recently purchased life insurance on her kids, also purchased a gasoline can at Safeway immediatley prior to the fire. (one kid died, the other jumped from a window and lived). In my life, I sometimes buy hundreds of pounds of fertilizer to kick-start the biological activity at a toxic waste site. Post-First-WTC-attack, I sometimes use cash so as to leave less of a paper trail.

My complaint against GoLite and a reason they've lost several sales to me, is that they don't ship USPS, only UPS. Their choice, sure. But I gotta think USPS comes to their business every day like it does to mine so maybe they just can't be bothered or got a better rate from UPS by promising 100% of their business. But $37 second-day-air (there's no UPS surface to Alaska) instead of $14 USPS Priority on $100 of stuff loses the sale in my case. Sierra Trading Post is more flexible and last I looked at my account, I've dropped about $12,000 on them over the last 15 years.

In the airline industry, Alaska and Southwest almost always make a profit, in part by making some hard-and-fast decisions - you WILL book on-line (essentially), all planes fly full, only one plane type (737), etc. Nordstrom's, REI and LL Bean take the reverse approach - largely, the customer is always right.

"But I gotta think USPS comes to their business every day like it does to mine so maybe they just can't be bothered or got a better rate from UPS by promising 100% of their business."

Absolutely true. Some companies promise all of their normal shipping business to UPS. In return, they get a kickback or discount on the shipping rates. So, the customer invoice says that the shipping fee was $50, and the customer pays that. In reality, the company pays only $35 to UPS, and the missing $15 is pure profit from the pocketbook of the customer.

That's why some customers ask who the carrier is, and if UPS is the answer, then the customer supplies its own UPS account number to the deal, and that way it is not paying the unnecessary $15 profit. Some companies are looking for ways to get around that situation and score the $15 profit anyway.

Whenever I run across a company and I don't like their business methods, I find another company. That's something about a free market economy.